Luan opens the photo book in seconds, scrunching up his nose. “Ew. You were all gooey.”
“No shit.”
“Aww, look at that cute little nose!” He looks up from the picture. “Yup, still the same one.”
Why do I even like this guy?
Luan turns the page, and another one, and another one. The more pages he turns, the brighter his smile gets. Until it vanishes altogether. The second he stops smiling, I know which pictures he’s reached without even having to see them myself.
“Where’d that smile go?” he asks, running a finger over the picture of twelve-year-old me. He freezes when said finger reaches a camp sign. That’s when his head snaps up. “You went to church camp?”
I nod.
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not.” Not anymore. I used to be, and then my father tried to pray away the gay and that was the moment I decided I don’t give a shit anymore. So then I’ll end up in hell, at least I had a fun time on earth fucking whoever I wanted.
“Grey, please tell me this isn’t some… I don’t know, some camp to…” He can’t even put it into words, and I don’t blame him because neither can I.
“You know what’s funny? Those nuns tried to make us ‘normal’ again, but they forgot something. All of our parents sent us there because we were interested in boys, clearly. It was aboyscamp though. I shared a room with three other guys. I kissed two of them.”
Luan nods slowly. “Well, I always thought those camps were stupid.”
They are. You can’t just send your kids to church camp and expect them to come back suddenly no longer interested in the same gender as them after six weeks of trauma. The only logical reason for one of those kids to no longer want to date whoever they want would be because they’ve been completely traumatized. If they caught us kissing, we’d get beatings for thirty minutes straight, and then we had to seek out forgiveness from God. We had to confess what we had done and apologize over and over again, then go through another round of beatings.
It's sickening to even think that those campsstillexist.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Grey…”
I wave him off. “It’s fine. I actually had fun there when we weren’t told how bad liking guys was or how it’s a sin. I made it my personal mission to kiss that one guy anywhere I could without getting caught. And we used to pull pranks on the nuns all the time. We were a hopeless case.”
“Well I’m glad you were. But it’s still not okay that you had to go through it.” Luan looks at me with tears in his eyes, but before I even get the chance to tell him that I don’t want him to cry because of me going through that, he’s already speaking again. “I don’t get why parents do that. Aren’t they supposed to love their kids no matter what? Like, if you cannot accept your kid for who they are or who they turn out to be, why even have some? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here, but I still think your dad shouldn’t have had kids if he can’t love you the way you are.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Luan gets off the bed, making his way over to me. When he stands in front of me with his hands on my face, my heart does a little backflip.
“Fear not, Grey Davis, you’ve got me now. And I will love every single part of you for the rest of my life,” he says, slowly stroking his thumbs over my skin.
“Even if I killed someone?”
He nods. “I’d help you kill them. We’ll be like Bonnie and Clyde.”
“They got caught and died.”
Luan rolls his eyes. “Fine. We’ll be like Romeo and Juliet. They’re not allowed to be together, neither are we.”
I chuckle. “They, uh… they committed suicide.”
Luan groans, leaning himself back to the point where he’d fall to the floor if I didn’t have my arms around his body to keep him standing. “You just had to ruin it, didn’t you?” He lifts his head again. “Hadrian and Antinous!”
“Antinous dies.”
“Cleopatra and Antony?”
“They die together.”
“Are thereanyhistorical, fictional, or non-fictional couples that make it out alive!?”